Never Say Goodbye

“Never say goodbye. Goodbye is forever. It means that you won’t ever see that person again. When we part, we say see you soon or see you later because then we know it is not forever. So little lady, I will see you later.” Grandpa Harry

My grandfather said these words to me all through my childhood. To my grandfather goodbye was a dirty word that was only said at funerals and rarely to the living. Over the years I lost count of how many times I heard my grandfather say those words to me. I always cherished hearing see you later or see you soon because I knew that was an old man’s way of saying that he loved me and it wasn’t until the last time we saw each other that I realized how deeply one word could affect me.

It is only the very first time that sticks out clearly in my mind, the others meld together in my mind. It was Christmastime and my Granny and Grandpa, who were my father’s parents, were up for a visit. Normally they wouldn’t travel the three hours to my childhood home as being in the car for a long time was difficult for my grandparents. It was the day after Christmas and they were leaving to make the trip back home. I hugged my grandpa tight and said goodbye. He held onto me tightly and told me what goodbye meant to him and then said he would see me soon. He let me go and left with Granny back to Peterborough.

I was an incredibly quiet child in a very loud family. I have three siblings who are all older than me by several years and many cousins most of which were older than me with only three being close to my age. All of which were loud, opinionated and noisy. Whereas I would sit quietly as they joked around or had arguments for arguments sake. Most of the time I would sequester myself in the basement watching old children’s movies or outside on their porch swing reading books. It was difficult, I suppose, to understand that I was happy with my own company rather than being surrounded by noise. My sister was the only one, on the rare occasions she came up with us, that would come out and sit in the quiet with me. As a child I thought she was there to keep an eye on me but as I grew up I realized she didn’t like most of our extended family because of their racist and misogynistic ways. The cruelest actually being our own father.

My father is an awful angry man who enjoyed abusing his family. He didn’t raise his hands to us but rather his words. He was very emotionally and mentally abusive as well as a master manipulator. He would say things to me whenever he saw me eat, didn’t matter if it was healthy or not, that if I kept eating I’d be fat like my mother. Or he would wait until we were all sitting at the dinner table and ask his children how we would feel if he “replaced your mother with a young brown thing” or would threaten to kill our cat and turn her into a rug.

My oldest brother was his favourite child as he was what a man should be according to my father. My brother played football in high school, was in the army and is a firefighter. He was rough around the edges though he was much kinder than my father and didn’t tolerate any crap as my brother would put it. My sister is an incredibly smart woman who is highly educated and very opinionated and had no compunctions about stating her opinions even if they would be unpopular in our family. My father hated this as most things she said went against what he believed to be true.

My other brother was a very emotional person who wore his heart on his sleeve and very easy to upset. Instead of wanting to play sports my youngest brother liked card games like Magic: The Gathering or role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. In his own way my brother was incredibly talented in sciences and math but not very good in social situations which made him a very easy target in our family. Our father seemed to delight in tormenting him because it was just so easy to upset him.

Then there was me. I was quiet and frightened easily. I spent all of my childhood and into my adulthood being terrified that he would be mad at me because I never knew what he would do when he was angry. I tried to hide away as best I could but it didn’t always work for me. I would invite friends over when I could because he was nice in front of company and I enjoyed the fact that he traveled all over the world to work. Sometimes he would be gone for weeks at a time. That was the only time we experienced peace in our home.

I knew from a young age that my family, mostly my extended family found me strange because I wasn’t loud and boisterous like everyone else. In fact I rarely spoke unless I had to which lead to my grandfather calling me Silent Yokum. I hated that nickname and would repeatedly tell my grandfather so but he was old and stubborn and thought it was funny. After a few months of being teased with this nickname I vowed to my grandpa, with all the dramatics of an almost seven year old, that I would no longer be speaking to him if he continued to call me something that was not my name. Grandpa didn’t believe me or thought I wouldn’t stick to it and continued to call me by that awful nickname.

Almost seven years went by and I was now a teenager but just as reserved as I was when I was a younger child. Not once in those seven years did I utter a word to Grandpa that I didn’t have to speak – mainly pleasantries and answers to direct questions I couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t until a trip my family took up to my grandparent’s home during the Christmas holidays the year I turned thirteen that he finally stopped.

It was such a momentous moment in my life that even though it happened almost twenty years ago I can still remember it quite clearly: From my family’s home in Copetown, Ontario to my grandparent’s home in Peterborough, it took several hours to drive. Traffic always sucked and I was squished between two of my older siblings. It was always a horrible drive but it was worth it to see my Granny, a woman I loved dearly. I loved my grandpa too but had resigned myself to not having much of a relationship with him as he continuously refused to call me by my given name. When we all piled into the sweet green and white two bedroom house my grandparents owned my grandpa called me over to him. I followed him through the house to the living room where on a little table sat a beautiful jewelry box. It was black with traditional Japanese paintings of mountains and rivers on the outside with mother of pearl along the borders.

When I opened the main compartment a picture of a geisha was painted onto the small mirror and a quiet melody started playing. He was giving it to me, he told me, because a number of years ago – well before I was born – he had given rosewood jewelry boxes to my mother and sister. It was then that he called me by my name for the first time in seven years. I gave him a hug and thanked him for the beautiful gift. Men in my family hardly ever say sorry for anything and I knew I would never get a verbal apology but to me that gift of being called by my name was enough.

For a very long time I wondered why he had picked that name for me… I understood the “silent” part as I was so quiet but I never understood the Yokum part until very recently. There is an old comic strip called Li’l Abner that features a character called Silent Yokum who never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary. Which, in retrospect, was a very apt nickname considering how quiet I used to be as a child. I’m pretty sure it was my Granny who made him stop though. She was a kind and loving woman but when pushed you would find a backbone of steel and I believe she had had enough of us not speaking.

The next few years were amazing with my grandfather. I would spend a week or two each summer with them as well as most holidays. Grandpa would take me shopping and Granny would teach me how to cook. A few times Grandpa would take me to a special place in town and tell me stories about my family there or about the city itself. As my siblings were much older than me most of the time I would have them to myself, or with cousins in similar age to me. It was really the most fun I ever had with them and probably the best times of my childhood. My favourite time would be at the trailer – there were always kids my age around to play with and a lake that, while cold even in the summer, I would be swimming in for as long as I could. My last summer I spent there Grandpa had trained a chipmunk to sit on his knee and do tricks for peanuts. Sitting there on the porch with him is probably my most cherished memory of my grandpa and I knew he loved this time with me.

At fourteen, we moved from the home where I grew up into an old farmhouse my father had dreams of fixing up. It was a horrible ugly place and everyone save my father hated it there. We spent a few years there until I was sixteen going on seventeen, tip toeing around my father, until one day my parents had a huge argument. My sister and I were in the living room listening to my father, once again, berate my mother. It was something that happened on an almost constant basis but was getting worse as time went on. It was during that argument that my mother had had enough of his abuse. Later that evening she told me in secret that we were going to leave him and I never had been happier. It took a month to find a place for us as my two brothers had already moved out within the last few years and my sister had plans to move in with her then boyfriend, who is now her husband. We found a safe place to go and when my dad left one day for a three day trip early in May we packed up and left. It was a chaotic day filled with trepidation and excitement. There was always a chance that my father’s job would get cancelled and he would have to come home. As we were leaving secretly we had to pack everything after he had left. It took all day but by the end of it I was laying on my bed in my new bedroom. I felt such freedom that I had never felt before and for the first time in my life I felt free and unburdened.

My father, when he returned, was enraged that we had left. He stalked us and harassed us but the worst thing he did after we left was poison his side of the family against us. At first he was nice, trying to get us back home and I tried for my mother’s sake to have a relationship with my father. At the time she didn’t know a lot of things that he did to us when she wasn’t around. It wasn’t until a month after we left that I felt comfortable enough to tell my mom some of the things that he did to all of us when she wasn’t home or around to act as a buffer. Mom then told me I wouldn’t have to see him anymore but I wanted to continue, if only to see my grandparents.

One visit he continuously tried to convince me to move back into the farmhouse and became vicious with his words when he realized I wasn’t going to do what he wanted. I knew that if I moved back in, not only would I be back under his thumb, but I would be nothing more than a maid who couldn’t quit or leave since the farm was quite a ways away from the nearest town. I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to see him anymore and we got into an argument. When it became clear he was starting to get violent, he was throwing things, I called my mother and asked her to come and get me.

After we left my father went on a rampage. He drove down to my grandparents and spout out a ton of lies about me and my mother. Mama was painted as a horrid woman who was after his money and I was ungrateful and a brat because I would take his money, meaning child support payments that went to my mother, but I wouldn’t see him. He had a silver tongue and was easily able to sway people to his side. Many on his side of the family took his version of events without question and we were cast out. At this point in time only my oldest brother was on speaking terms with our father as my father alienated the other two as well.

During that time I tried to reach out to cousins but I was unsuccessful. I had hope that I would be able to see my family when he was out of the country and was excited when I was given permission to go and visit my grandparents at their summer home in the camp ground. It was a place where I spent a lot of amazing times with my grandparents and I was happy that they weren’t allowing what was happening between my parents to affect our relationship.

My mother took me there and I was not prepared for the welcome I received. My granny gave me a hug but not my grandpa. It was a tense visit with my granny asking many of the same questions over and over again. At the time I thought it was nerves but it was the beginning stages of dementia. I tried my best to have a good visit with them though I knew the circumstances made it a little awkward. At seventeen I didn’t understand why they were so upset with me and unaware of the lies being spread by their son.

My Grandpa sat with his back turned to me during the whole visit and only replied with one word answers. After two hours of this our visit ended. When it came time to leave I gave my granny a hug then turned to my grandfather. He gave me a short hug and then walked away. I called out to him and said see you later. He turned to me and said something I wasn’t prepared for. Goodbye.

I was shocked and I saw from the look on his face that he meant it. Granny had given him a look, being married for almost sixty years at that point she must have known about his aversion to the word goodbye and what it had meant him saying it to me. As I walked to the car my head was in a fog. My mother, who had taken me, had not heard the goodbye that was still ringing in my head. She promised that whenever I wanted to come back she or a close family friend would take me. I clicked my seat belt and shook my head. To this day I don’t know how I managed not to cry when I told her that it wasn’t a good visit and I probably wouldn’t be back for a while. My heart hurt as we pulled away that last time and as we pulled out of the driveway I said my own good byes knowing that I would most likely never see him again.

I held hope somewhere in the back of my mind that he or my granny might ask for me and I would have the courage to go see them again. It never happened. I tried a few times but my father was always there and I knew at that time in my life I wasn’t strong enough to face the man who abused me and my family for so many years.

A few years after that goodbye my Granny was diagnosed with dementia and they moved into my aunt’s home and I knew any chance to see them without any other family members was gone, especially since my aunt never liked me or my siblings – always comparing her children and grandchildren to us and found us lacking in one way or another. My father’s lies kept my siblings and me away from half of our family and denied us those last few good years with such a wonderful woman and a man I loved despite his faults.

Granny’s mental state declined rapidly and I knew that she had forgotten me within a short amount of time. She barely remembered who my grandfather was and they were married over seventy years at this point. My eldest brother was the only one the family still talked to, more or less because he didn’t give them a choice and would not tolerate any disrespect towards him or us. He gave us updates on Granny when he got them and told us what we already knew. Granny may be here in body but her mind was gone, only coming back for brief moments that were getting few and far in occurrence. She survived my grandfather only by a few months before she passed.

Over ten years have passed since that summer at the trailer and I have grown up and gone on with my life. I went on and finished high school and went to my dream college. I found an amazing job, after graduation, that I loved teaching preschool children and eventually found a wonderful man that I fell in love with and to whom I am now married. We have twin daughters that are our pride and joy. I was and am very happy but in the back of my mind all this time I knew that there was a clock ticking away somewhere that was counting down to what inevitably happens to all living things.

When I was seven months pregnant with my girls that clock stopped when my brother called me while I was at work. He gave me the news that Grandpa was being taken to hospice and not expected to live more than a few hours – a day at most. I was alone in my classroom, having put out the beds for the children to nap, when I received the news. I sat in the large wooden rocking chair for a moment and thought of all the things about my grandfather that I remembered. The nickname…. The trailer… jewelry box that I kept on my dresser… I knew I lived too far away to make the journey and even if I did there was no guarantee that I would make it in time or if, even on his deathbed, he would refuse to see me.

On my lunch that day I sat in a park and I watched a grandfather playing with his grandchildren. I knew him and the children playing as they belonged to the day care where I worked and smiled a little. I ate quietly and reflected on those wasted years that I didn’t talk to Grandpa. Was I wrong to have been so stubborn, especially knowing what grandpa was also very bullheaded? If I talked to him more would he have used my name sooner? And later… should I have pushed more to tell Grandpa about the things his son did to his family? All he lies? Should I have tried harder to mend the relationship between the two of us and would I have been successful? Would he have believed me? Probably not but I would never know for sure.

After work I was home alone, my husband having moved out a few months prior to get a job in the city where we were moving to, and in my mind I replayed it all. The good, the bad and the sad. I would always remember those precious years where I had his love and attention but knowing how many years we could have had weighed on my mind. I was sad that our relationship ended so suddenly because he believed the lies and slander of his son but I couldn’t fault him for that. My father is and always was able to manipulate those around him very easily and had a silver tongue so the lies came quick and easy.

I went into my bedroom and spotted the jewelry box on my dresser. I wound the key at the bottom and listened to the sad melody as it played. When it finished I closed the lid and laid my hand on the worn lacquer rubbing the small mother of pearl inlays around the edges. In my mind I could hear my grandpa’s voice telling me once more.

Never say goodbye.